Rep. Mo Brooks inexplicably reads anti-Semitic passage from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Seems like he tried to call Democrats nazis, but what he actually does is position Trump/GOP as nazis, Dems as Jews in his horrific analogy. Needs to be a MUCH bigger story. pic.twitter.com/oMNlnBjDR0— Adam Best (@adamcbest) March 26, 2019
I guess quoting "Mein Kampf" approvingly sounded alright in Brooks' head at the time for some reason, but I would really like to know exactly what kind of disinformation campaign ever let this soft-headed person think for even one instant that the voice of the Nazis was the one you should trust, and the strategy of demonizing the press or leftists was actually a non-Hitlerian strategy.
2 comments:
Vixen, I think I agree with you. As far as I'm concerned, whenever someone starts accusing others of being Nazis, fascists, white supremacists, etc., they have already forfeited the argument. We live in a mixed economy, as does every other country in the world. it is a combination of Government programs and capitalistic business. So far, no one on the legitimate right or left comes anywhere near to having association with the politics of the Third Reich.
Often socialist sympathizers point to Scandinavian countries as the ideal. Not Venezuela or Russia or Mao's China.
The fact is that in Denmark they don't have socialism. What they have is capitalism with an enormous welfare state. Government does not control the means of production. Furthermore, their welfare state is essentially supplied by workers who are not rich. In other words, they don't go after the well-to-do, inasmuch as those people don't need social services. The money for the welfare state is taxed from ordinary workers.
This arrangement has worked fairly well, although as you can imagine, they don't have a high standard of living. The flaw is that they work very hard to have full employment. This is because without full employment there aren't' enough salaries to generate enough money for the welfare state. And because they have a diminishing birth rate and an aging population, like the rest of the world, they are losing money needed for the welfare state. That means they need immigration, and these days immigration in Europe means Islam, and unfortunately, true believers in Islam believe in replacing Scandinavian government with Sharia law.
So far, no one who lives in a large country with many millions of people has been successful at having socialism. Scandinavian nations were becoming successful until the birth rate fell and the population's average age increased.
Political labels are tricky--I know you distrust ideologies, and I feel like different geographical regions, for reasons of economic status, demographics, etc, may feel like a varying mix of socialized services to regulated capitalist enterprises work for them--I mostly worry about the degree to which they are democratically favored by the people receiving those services and the consumers of those goods. I understand that Scandinavian countries do have a higher cost of living in general, but things like health care are more easily affordable--I can see how this might lend to less stress because disposable goods or luxury items aren't life and death--life and death is!
The problem with large countries historically that have adopted socialism/communism is that the process doesn't seem to be a popular social revolt, but through force. In the context of "labels are tricky", I note that anything called a "People's Democratic Republic" is likely to be not much of the above. But I don't know how true it is that immigrants necessarily change the culture of the nations they move to--they come not all at once, but waves, enabling assimilation to have occurred for earlier waves, and in general (not absolutely, but in general) would be more likely to be appreciative of the qualitative differences of a more free/better quality of life living arrangement. But I guess we are all too well aware of the exceptions to that rule, and the problem of radicalization. I just understand this to be a very minority role in Nordic nations.
Rather than rely on labels, it is more interesting to me to look at political actions--does t a government openly discriminate along ethnic and religious lines? Do they censor the news media? Do they seek out scapegoats to demonize and deflect attention away from attempts to get oversight over government functions and corruption? Does the government make choices over who is privileged to vote? Do they make choices about women's reproduction? Are they putting people in camps? Are they detaining people without trial? Are they privileging one ethnic type and religion over others?
Following government actions to determine what they really are about is most instructive.
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